A novel bit-level image encryption algorithm based on chaotic maps

Recently, a number of chaos-based image encryption algorithms have been proposed at the pixel level, but little research at the bit level has been conducted. This paper presents a novel bit-level image encryption algorithm that is based on piecewise linear chaotic maps (PWLCM). First, the plain image is transformed into two binary sequences of the same size. Second, a new diffusion strategy is introduced to diffuse the two sequences mutually. Then, we swap the binary elements in the two sequences by the control of a chaotic map, which can permute the bits in one bitplane into any other bitplane. The proposed algorithm has excellent encryption performance with only one round. The simulation results and performance analysis show that the proposed algorithm is both secure and reliable for image encryption.